United’s Advance Routing Rules and why they don’t matter

One thing that annoys me, but I kind of understand, is when airlines don’t publish their routing rules. Either their terms and coniditons leave out the technical info or they just say to call. Actually, most airlines leave out the technical issues and details.

A while back, perhaps a year or even two years ago, I posted about routing through the Middle East and Asia to save miles (which I continually have posted about… like yesterday). And I just remember someone in the comments “setting me straight” on the issue, explaining that most routes would exceed the MPM (Maximum Permitted Miles). Besides the usual ways around this, it turned out that it never mattered much.

Today I got an email regarding yesterday’s post, The Top 6 Uses of United Miles. In it I point out that the award chart starting from Hawaii is pretty stellar. So I got a question about combining the Hawaii award chart to continue to route through Europe to get to Asia. The answer is just not as easy as I would like. My answer is, officially no, and United.com will give you an error, but you should definitely call because it would be awesome. Here’s why…

Does anyone remember the flyertalk thread where someone “broke” the case that you are permitted going 15% over the maximum? Although I guess this is kind of common knowledge now, but makes me wonder what the word “maximum” even means if you’re allowed to go over it.

The thing is that I would book flights that go more than 15% over often. Although, there are a few routes that I couldn’t even find the MPM for. Assuming the MPM for Oceania to Oceania is around 2,000, I went 6 times over. But I don’t remember finding a specific MPM for GUM-RAR. Either way we flew over 24,000 miles roundtrip. About as much as North America to Asia via Europe.

So you shouldn’t care? Not anymore and I never really believed it existed. The bigger deal is that United.com‘s award engine seems to abide by these rules on standard routes, or something like it. Like North America to Asia. Still, I don’t know the actual rules on why but you still can’t book West coast USA to Asia via Europe yourself online.

Let’s pretend the MPM rules were in place… For example, it says Los Angeles (LAX) to Bali (DPS) has a MPM of 10716. This would definately make LAX-DPS via Europe a no-go, even abiding by the +15% rule.

Not that I believe in MPM, but I will say it’s interesting that this route is often not bookable online from the west coast. Could it be that they enforce some sort of MPM on this route?

Then we have the desired example, Hawaii (HNL) to Bali (DPS) has MPM of 8343.

This is way more restrictive and way further away from Europe. So coming close to 8343 miles is down right impossible if you want to route through Europe. Hawaii to Europe is nearly that amount.

But here’s my take on the situation, if the agent’s computer allows it, the agent will. It also seems that their computer is often not coded to prevent tickets that exceed the same rules we have on United.com. Just going to United.com will likely get you shut down. Perhaps United.com knows the rules and the agent’s system requires them to know the rules… and of course they don’t – no one does really.

So when you go over, call. This seems to be my advice. I mean, clearly you were/are able to book tickets that exceed the MPM and there are numerous examples of people exceeding the MPM + 15% then/now. So why not call and try to route through Europe to Asia regardless of where you’re starting from as no one really knows the routing rules now. If you read the post on The Secrets of Award Pricing Engines – The Most Powerful Zone, you know that at the very least it’s going to price like an Asia ticket and hopefully the agent won’t think your traveling around the world for only 65,000 miles in Business Class as odd.

For you old pros, perhaps you know the call, book, call and book more trick. Let me just say this for those who live in LAX, while being vague and admitting it is more risky and costs a little more… Lets say I book a ticket to JFK-FRA. It’s ticketed and paid for. Then my plans change but slightly and I just want to tack on a segment like LAX-JFK without changing the JFK-FRA flight. I just make it so I layover in JFK. Well, it’s still a US to Europe ticket, right? So it costs the exact same. You’ll just have to pay the change fee, that’s all, no extra mileage deducted. When doing this the computer just seems to determine whether or not the LAX-JFK part is legal and doesn’t seem to care about the second part as it’s already determined it’s legal. From what I’m told, they won’t check the entire route’s distance. But you didn’t hear it from me.

Although, this still doesn’t get you the desired Hawaiian price and thus leaving the original question unanswered. Hawaii to Asia via Europe? Obviously worth testing. Here’s what I do know… When you start from Hawaii, Japan is a more powerful zone than North Asia, so there are great options even cutting out Europe, but still- if you can tack on Europe, this could be incredible.

One last tip/theory. It’s a little hard to explain without giving examples but perhaps the post on the most powerful zones will give some hints… I’ve decided recently that you can trick the computer’s understanding of the MPM by routing through a certain place that has a large MPM but has a lower “power” when pricing awards. Getting both the large MPM but lower price. Make sense? If not go read that post I mentioned.

If you still don’t believe that you can book a ticket to Asia from the west coast… Let me say that I can even get it to come up on the computer using the tricks talked about. Don’t believe me? Look:

But for some reason it rarely routes through Europe.

Anywho… Sorry this is part tips, part vague, part verbal processing. I’m also trying to test the waters a little to see if there is any interest in talking more about this. Either MPM, routes from Hawaii (which is something I should just test out personally), tricking the online pricing engine, etc…

So are these routing rules in place still? At all? Somehow?